Editors’ Note: This is the transcript version of the podcast. Please note that due to time and audio constraints, transcription may not be perfect. We encourage you to listen to the podcast, embedded below if you need any clarification. We hope you enjoy!
When an individual steps inside a cannabis dispensary, their intent is clear. Personalizing the experience inside and positioning eager targeted brands is now possible.
This week on The Dime, we host Ian Rumpp, President of Tella, to discuss the following:
- An alternative to the race to the bottom
- Digitizes the dispensary experience.
- Personalizes product recommendations
About Tella
Tella provides full service, online & on-premise digital experience solutions, custom designed to connect businesses with their customers. Our services are tailored to your business needs, designed to tell your story through premium digital content, driven by smart data analytics, and deployed through advanced marketing technologies.
Guest Links
https://www.telladigital.com/cannabis
https://www.instagram.com/tella.digital/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/telladigital/
https://www.tiktok.com/@telladigital
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAzFB-_ZAh0yMp1JPKf_7_w
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianrumpp/
https://twitter.com/rumppdiddy?s=21&t=XSxSvPom2IpZdnc9_PJ_bw
https://www.instagram.com/ianrumpp/?hl=en
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[00:00:00]Bryan Fields: What’s up guys? Welcome back to another episode of The Dime. I’m Brian Fields and with me, as always as killing Fe. This week got a very special guest, Ian Rump, president of Tele Ian, thanks for taking the time. How you
[00:00:12]Ian Rumpp: doing today? Thanks, fells. Doing great. Appreciate you having me on the pod. Really excited.
[00:00:17] I’ve been, uh, as you know, I’ve been bugging you for a while, so I’m, I’m excited to
[00:00:20]Bryan Fields: be here. Yeah, we’re excited the time is here and excited to have you in the hot seat. Ke, how are you? I’m
[00:00:25]Kellan Finney: doing really well, really excited to talk to Ian, another, uh, fellow West Coaster, and really excited to kind of dive into the behind the scenes network that makes the CAS
[00:00:34]Bryan Fields: industry move.
[00:00:34] Right. Yeah. And I guess for the record, Ian, uh, your location please?
[00:00:39]Ian Rumpp: Boise, Idaho. So would you put
[00:00:42]Bryan Fields: yourselves on the east coast or the West
[00:00:43]Ian Rumpp: coast? We’re kind like Pacific Northwest, I would say West is kind of, that’s, that’s what I would. West Coast, best Coast, west Coast, best Coast. Oh man. That one’s
[00:00:54]Bryan Fields: definitely getting edited.
[00:00:57] So Ian, our listeners I’m familiar about, you can [00:01:00] give it a
[00:01:00]Ian Rumpp: little background about yourself. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, um, I, I’ve been in the, the industry as part of tele, you know, I was basically employee number two. We started this thing about four and a half years ago now. Um, and prior to that I was in the grocery industry.
[00:01:15] I worked for Albertson’s companies. Uh, I was on digital marketing team. Did basically everything you could imagine from like setting. Coupons and point of sale systems all the way out to, you know, social targeting and relationships with Facebook, uh, Twitter, Pinterest of the world. Um, and yeah, so ever since we, uh, hopped over, uh, to start tele, started with some, uh, emphasis in grocery, but uh, quickly moved to cannabis and basically we’ve been highly focused there for the past three and a half years.
[00:01:46] And, and that’s where we are today. So just to stay with
[00:01:49]Bryan Fields: that, when you first got started with tele, you were not cannabis focused and then kind of added that into the vertical.
[00:01:55]Ian Rumpp: Yeah, so we, we did our first pilot program with grocery, um, because we’re, what we do is we [00:02:00] center around in-store digital activations, right?
[00:02:02] So everything from digital signage to really anything you could imagine that has a digital footprint within a store. So we did a pilot with grocery. We got an opportunity to do a pilot in cannabis with the Mesa Organic stores in Colorado. We had some great success and it took off from there. Over
[00:02:19]Kellan Finney: those early days when you first got into cannabis, was there some pushback from your colleagues and stuff like
[00:02:23]Ian Rumpp: that?
[00:02:24] You know, like overall, not really. Like, it was something where like, it just made sense. Like we, we knew that cannabis was at least digitally friendly, right? Whereas groceries, like so old school that it was hard just to explain what that even means, whereas, . You know, even if a dispensary just had like a menu board that, or a, excuse me, a menu screen that had like a Google sheet with their menu on it, like that was enough for us to say, okay, they at least have digital focus so we can go in and kind of up the game there.
[00:02:52]Bryan Fields: What about proximity and where you’re located? Were there any hesitations with people around you when you told them, Hey, you know, we’re in the groceries now? we’re thinking [00:03:00] about getting to the cannabis
[00:03:00]Ian Rumpp: industry. Yeah. You know, it’s interesting cuz I’m in Idaho, right? So like, you know, my, my stupid dad joke is, uh, will be the 60th state to legalize, right?
[00:03:10] Like, we’ll be, we’ll have a bunch more before we get to that point. But, uh, honestly, I mean the, the, you know, the way that the industry’s growing so rapidly and all these new states coming online and things like that. Even in the, in the early days, it wasn’t, it wasn’t unheard of, right? Like, We’re trying to do something innovative.
[00:03:26] We’re a startup, you know, we’re doing something that’s not the norm that fits great with the way the industry is probably viewed overall, right? Like it’s, it’s new, it’s wild west, et cetera. So not too much.
[00:03:38]Bryan Fields: And it’s good too, your experience, your team has the experience of in the groceries, which as the industry continues to evolve, we’ll probably bleed into more of the retail space for the traditional side.
[00:03:46] So let’s talk to, uh, tell a high level. Can you give us an overview of the type of company and the type of customers that would use the, the program?
[00:03:53]Ian Rumpp: Yeah, absolutely. So, so tele is what, you know, what looks like a shopper marketing agency for the most part. [00:04:00] Um, shopper marketing’s mostly a grocery term.
[00:04:02] It’s essentially the relationship between brands and retailers and how they activate together in store. Um, so what we do is we help both brands and dispensaries, uh, make the most of their digital in-store experience, whether that’s unique digital merchandising displays for brands. Or, uh, you know, more of like a shopper marketing, vendor sponsor program for the dispensaries.
[00:04:24] Um, either way, the goal is really to use digital to help tell stories a little bit better through the content, ultimately measure the success of it, and ultimately, for both of ’em, sell. It’s
[00:04:36]Bryan Fields: key, right? Especially now with what’s a focus on that. But I wanna go through the experience, right, because there’s so many different touch points that I’ve seen you touch on, and I want our listeners to kind of get like the visual of exactly where these these places would be.
[00:04:46] So can you explain to them when they’re walking into dispensary, where these type of activations would
[00:04:49]Ian Rumpp: be? Yeah, so some of the more simple versions of what you would see would be utilizing digital signage within a store to feature brands, feature promotions, um, [00:05:00] things like that. The ones that are gaining a lot of popularity with us are what I call our digital merchandising displays.
[00:05:06] So that would be things like, A unique, custom designed, um, you know, cubby unit that goes in the glass cases that has, it’s all the branding, it has some packaging, and then it has some form of a digital screen built into it so that not only can you remotely change that content if you have different, you know, initiatives going on, but you also then have the ability to.
[00:05:28] Tell your brand story and you know, ultimately some of it too is just to catch people’s eyes, right? Like especially in these really congested markets, how do you stand out? There’s 17 other vapes on a shelf, like why does someone look at yours? Right? So some of it is that base level, but that’s really, you know, where our bread and butter is.
[00:05:47] And we have everything from, you know, small cubby displays out to big floor standing shelving units, and all of ’em have digital.
[00:05:54]Bryan Fields: It’s so important too, because when we talk about being in a dispensary, right, and you’re waiting online, you’re looking around, you’re [00:06:00] taking in the experience and you’re seeing all the brands and some of the brands who might not be positioned correctly might get overlooked.
[00:06:05] And especially as people are fighting for, let’s say, initial adoption, right? That early brand loyalty to, to adopt those products, having that position where they can see something and and understand the story and reading can really connect with the brand, could probably be a huge difference maker between, let’s say, a consumer making the purchase with product A
[00:06:21]Ian Rumpp: or going with product.
[00:06:23] Yeah, exactly. I mean, part of the narrative too, right? Like it’s been a big thing in terms of race to the bottom. Everybody’s doing, you know, promos on top of promos and ultimately, you know, the idea there is that, oh, my product will sell because you can get more for less type thing, right? And there is some, some truth to that of course.
[00:06:40] But part of the narrative of, of what we’ve tried to help people understand is that you don’t necessarily have to do that If you’re able to catch someone’s eye, if you have cool product, if there’s something unique about your product and you’re able to convey that to a consumer, they’re gonna buy you instead of just going after the promos.
[00:06:58] Right? Like we’re evolving as an [00:07:00] industry in terms of like, you’ve got people that are day one consumers, then you’ve got legacy consumers that know exactly what they’re after, right? So you have a, you have much more of a breadth that you’re kind of showing your your product to, right. .
[00:07:15]Kellan Finney: So if I’m a dispensary and I’m offering these kind of like digital services to some of these brands, what are some of the metrics that I can kind of point to to show
[00:07:23]Bryan Fields: that this kind of effort is leading to more
[00:07:26]Kellan Finney: sales for
[00:07:27]Bryan Fields: these brands?
[00:07:28]Ian Rumpp: Yeah, so I mean, some of it is as basic as just point of sales, sales data, right? Mm-hmm. . So like understanding the quantity of units you’re moving, understanding what those margins are, you know, things like that. And then some of the other things that we’ve really found valuable are more around trends. So, especially if you have a mixture of SKUs in a store, which one is performing better than the others?
[00:07:49] Right? And why? Right. So the idea is you’d wanna understand and optimize your product mix both on the brand side and the dispensary side, right? So [00:08:00] if a dispensary’s carrying five SKUs of a certain brand, one of them doesn’t sell ever. Why is. , that right? So digital is a way, a good way to either test that theory out or just purely to let’s get it out of the store, you know, let’s move it and let’s bring something else in.
[00:08:15] Um, so I would say that the most important metrics really are gonna come down to obviously sales, but also, um, related to your product mix and understanding how it performs against your own SKUs or how it performs against other that are in the same category before we dive like
[00:08:32]Bryan Fields: deeper into the, the metrics, I wanna talk with some of more of the messaging aspects, right?
[00:08:35] So based on the placement of the tele display, the information might be different, right? If you’re earlier into the store, you might have more of a brand awareness, but as you get closer to, let’s say, the purchasing counter, you might want to be hammering home specific pricing capabilities. Can you kind of expand on the strategy behind that?
[00:08:51] And does your team help walk through the cons, the, the customer in understanding those
[00:08:56]Ian Rumpp: differe. Yep. Exactly. So, so, great question. [00:09:00] Um, and it actually, I can even go back to our pilot, uh, with this too, because the way we designed the pilot was thinking about a customer journey within a dispensary, right? So the same way you would think about a sales funnel and where customers interact with you within a dispensary, and especially because in Colorado at the time, you know, there was always a lobby, there’s a sales floor, and then this point of sale.
[00:09:22] So what we did was. , okay what can you do digitally at each one of those touchpoints and what’s the purpose of them So to your point, the lobbies are much more like evergreen brand awareness, you know, basic things like that. Whereas as you approach the point of sale, you’re, you’re at the point of purchase they’re about to buy.
[00:09:41] How do you get them to buy one more thing? So from a digital perspective, you know, you’ve got something like a large free-standing display in the lobby. You get into the sales floor, you’ve got a kiosk, or you’ve got digital signage that’s talking about a. . brand And then at point of sale, we actually have, uh, countertop units that sit right there that are [00:10:00] ability for brands to showcase.
[00:10:02] And we have these back of point of sale screens that we can attach that are basically like the latch last ditch effort, you know, to get someone to, Hey, why don’t you add a pre-roll? Or Why don’t you add whatever it is, right? Um, so the idea there is, is we have to educate a little bit both on the dispensary and the brand front, but once they understand that basic flow, , it’s a lot easier to help them understand how they can utilize it and what they’re looking for in terms of measurement.
[00:10:29] Yeah,
[00:10:29]Bryan Fields: it’s so important. It’s so important because if a brand is looking for, let’s say, wider impression based, positioning them closer to the person encounter is not really what they’re looking for. They’re looking for when they first walk into a store, let’s hit them with a big announcement so that as they proceed in the name of the brand, let’s say WA is just kind of stuck in the back of their head as they continue to the floor.
[00:10:48]Ian Rumpp: Yeah. . Yeah. And the, and the idea there too is that, you know, one of the questions that you get around digital is like, well, doesn’t that take away from the relationship between the customer and the bud tender? No, it does not. The point actually is [00:11:00] to make it easier for them to talk, right? So if you see Juan or whatever it is, right?
[00:11:05] You go in and, and you ask the bud tenderer about it. Now the bud tender’s just being an educator, right? They don’t have to like hit you on it. They’re, they’re answering your questions based on something you saw that you’re interested in as a customer. And it creates a much better working kind of relationship there where the bud tender can still be very valuable and create that connection with the consumer versus the them feeling like they have to pitch them on it.
[00:11:28] Right.
[00:11:32] I was just gonna ask
[00:11:33]Bryan Fields: about the onboarding process for
[00:11:34]Kellan Finney: dispensaries. , um, when you bring ’em on, I mean, is this
[00:11:38]Bryan Fields: kind of, uh, first day training,
[00:11:40]Kellan Finney: they understand all these different touchpoints
[00:11:42]Bryan Fields: and you kind of just let ’em run with it
[00:11:43]Kellan Finney: from there? Or is there a transition period between, uh, actual
[00:11:47]Bryan Fields: onboarding and then them kind
[00:11:48]Kellan Finney: of customizing the, the digital ads that are being presented on each one of these, uh, screens,
[00:11:53]Ian Rumpp: if you will?
[00:11:54] Yeah. Great question. Kind of depends on if they’re doing anything that’s similar at the moment. [00:12:00] That’s, that’s how we structure it, right? So if they’re already charging for shelf space, I use that as a way to say, Here’s what you’re currently doing. Here’s the way to expand that a little bit more, which ultimately opens up more opportunities for them to sell it back to the brands.
[00:12:15] Um, but you’re dead on in terms of onboarding. Like it takes a little bit of initial education around why you’d wanna do something like this. Cuz obviously if you’re gonna put a bunch of digital in a store, there’s a cost to that. Mm-hmm. . Uh, but the revenue that they’re gonna get back, selling it back to brands is, is pretty significant.
[00:12:32] Especially in stores that have high volume, those are very valuable placements and brands really wanna have that prime placement in a store. So, , if we’re talking to a dispensary, we help them understand where those high touch points are, and those are gonna be their most valuable placements in terms of the package.
[00:12:48] So in re, in
[00:12:48]Bryan Fields: regards to like the transactional, how it works, tell would work with the dispenser and the dispensary would work with
[00:12:53]Ian Rumpp: the brand. Exactly. Or we help, we also offer that as a service. Um, ultimately we don’t, we’re not trying to step on [00:13:00] anybody’s toes either, right? Like the brand and the dispensary.
[00:13:02] They gotta work together to understand just orders, fulfillment, basic stuff like that. So what we’re doing is try to help them optimize and ultimately sell through more. So if we’re working with a dispensary, we act as that intermediate to really help them build it out. If they don’t have it already, if they do have it already, we just help them execute and optimize.
[00:13:22] Is
[00:13:22]Kellan Finney: there like a critical threshold for like, uh, a number of dispensaries this makes sense
[00:13:27]Ian Rumpp: for? Not really. Um, I would say that it, it definitely starts to become a little bit more, um, you. Synergistic, if you will, after you have three or more, because then you can spread some of those costs out. Yeah. But we do have use cases where we’ve got one client, one dispensary, but they see high volume.
[00:13:47] So it works, you know.
[00:13:50]Bryan Fields: And traffic too. Traffic is probably a very critical factor. Yeah. Because the more people you get into the store, the more people can see it. So essentially what I’m envisioning it is kind of like in the Google search where there’s the [00:14:00] intent behind it, right? People either informational searching or they’re buying intent.
[00:14:04] But when you walk into a dispensary, , most people aren’t there to, to gather research, right? They’re there to purchase product, which means every one of the brands is willing to spend a little more money because they can be the ones quote unquote selected in the experience that they know there’s products there.
[00:14:18] They know they can build that brand awareness and they know they can compete for the customer
[00:14:21]Ian Rumpp: acquisition cost. That’s right. Yeah. So, and especially, you know, while the industry as a whole still doesn’t have a whole lot of options around E-com, like traditional e-comm, if you will, , the in-store is, is so important, right?
[00:14:33] Because to your point, Brian, like when people go into a dispensary, they’re going to buy something. That’s why they’re there. So it’s, how do you either get them to buy more or a specific product or whatever it is, right? But that’s what they’re there for. So that’s what you really wanna try to capitalize on, whether you’re a brand or dispensary that’s like make the most of that.
[00:14:53] space
[00:14:54]Bryan Fields: is there any thoughts to make it like a bidding system a based on a number of impressions where after [00:15:00] so-and-so gets X amount of impressions, it goes on to the next brand?
[00:15:03]Ian Rumpp: So yeah, you’re, uh, you’re touching on some of the stuff that’s, that’s coming. It’s in the pipeline. So some of, some of it purely just depend is, is dependent on having a little bit more sophisticated data out there in the space.
[00:15:16] Um, but what we can already do are things like automated or automated triggers for content. So I call it dynamic content. . What that means is we can take a data, you know, input right through an API that says, okay, the majority of the customers that are in the store right now prefer edibles, therefore, we can trigger edibles content.
[00:15:36] Right? So the, the, the tech is there, the capability is there. It’s more about acceptance, understanding, and then execution ultimately, which we’re getting closer to, but it’s still pretty base. So this
[00:15:52]Bryan Fields: is all great in theory, but very, very challenging to communicate this not only to dispensaries, but to brands on the differences between [00:16:00] specific metrics that are of value to them, because not everyone’s as fluid with the different placements and how critical understanding which metrics are valuable to them at certain point.
[00:16:08] So from an educational standpoint, is that a majority of your role as kind of working with these different partners to help guide them through the understanding of which metrics are important? .
[00:16:18]Ian Rumpp: Yeah, it’s definitely a huge part of what we do. You know, like in terms of a traditional sales process, we’re far from that.
[00:16:25] Like it’s not like you see something on the shelf, you buy it and you leave, right? Like it’s definitely a handhold walk you through it, help you understand it process. Um, but what we’ve been able to do, especially on the dispensary side, is we’ve been able to pull you. , all these learnings from our, our existing clients where we’re seeing basket lifts that are 35% or more when you utilize the tactics that we have.
[00:16:47] Right? So you’re seeing basket penetration rates, which, which we have to educate on as well, but the idea there is you’re selling more, which is very easy for them to understand. And then I can break it down into like what that means [00:17:00] exactly. But the idea with the basket lift is that, okay, traditionally you had, you know, $77 basket across the.
[00:17:08] You incorporate some brand tactics that we’re talking about here, and all of a sudden you’re seeing an $85 basket average, something like that. Things like that are pretty easy for them to understand. And then it, it doesn’t matter as much like all the nitty gritty, nuts and bolts, you know, that go into it.
[00:17:24] That’s, that’s where we specialize. And so really what we do is we communicate the high level education and then we help them understand how that works. What’s the biggest
[00:17:32]Bryan Fields: pushback usually here in that conversation? When you say the increase in the basket size?
[00:17:37]Ian Rumpp: Uh, well, increasing the basket size, that’s not a pushback.
[00:17:40] But in terms of how, how we sell and what we sell, usually it’s related to price, right? Like the fact that you have to invest in updated hardware or whatever it is, right? That’s usually a pushback. I get it, especially in the state of the industry. Everybody’s real tight on budgets right now. Um, but on the flip side, we also help them understand that it’s a way to [00:18:00] monetize.
[00:18:01] you know, you might spend a decent chunk of money to upgrade all of your digital, but you can turn around and charge brand packages to all the brands you’ve got in the stores. I mean, not every single brand, but like, you’ll sell it back to the brands and before you know it, it’s just incremental dollars that are coming through.
[00:18:17] How much more
[00:18:18]Bryan Fields: sophisticated have
[00:18:19]Kellan Finney: the, have the conversations gotten with with operators since
[00:18:21]Bryan Fields: inception?
[00:18:22]Ian Rumpp: Uh, it’s like night and day, man. Like the, the first conversations I had it was I was speaking a different language completely, right? Whereas now, , it’s a lot more understood that there is something related to how you deal between brands and dis and dispensaries and how they work together, how they help increase sales on both fronts.
[00:18:44] Um, and especially because digital is, is a, you know, common and understood thing. For the most part. Now, uh, it’s, it’s become a lot easier, right? Like, . Yeah. Things like that pop up a lot. We’ve got some great partners in the space that do a lot of great work [00:19:00] there as well. So, you know, with those things becoming more accepted, that conversation’s become a lot easier than it was day one.
[00:19:09] that’s for sure. Are,
[00:19:10]Bryan Fields: are there any partners outside of the cannabis industry, hypothetically, as someone’s purchased their products and they finished their acquisition of them and they’re leaving, there might be a screen there that tells them, Hey, taco Bell’s
[00:19:21]Ian Rumpp: around the. Yeah, so all of it’s capable for sure, and I love that idea because uh, depending on the state there, you can actually do some of that, right?
[00:19:30] So like you can create something that looks a little bit more like a digital out-of-home network that’s a little bit more programmatic, that kind of thing. And you can actually incorporate those into these spaces as well. So you’re dead on, you kind of have a
[00:19:43]Kellan Finney: headstart on like, um, e like the future of commerce, right?
[00:19:47] In terms of like at a dispensary, someone has to go in and give their, I. , right? So then you’re able to. Historically what the individual has purchased in the past. Yeah. And then plug that all in into these [00:20:00] digital aspects. I’m thinking like this kind of program also is gonna apply to Amazon’s dream with uh, whole Foods.
[00:20:07] Right. That’s what they acquired, right? Yeah. So it’ll be kind of the same exact technology. infrastructure that you guys are kind of have a head start on now that other grocery stores don’t.
[00:20:15]Ian Rumpp: Yeah, exactly. So that’s, I mean, that’s the end goal ultimately is something that’s very connected. Um, you know, one of the terms that I’ve used a lot with Intelli is connected marketing.
[00:20:25] Because, you know, there’s, the idea is that you don’t want things to be siloed, right? So as much as you can from an operator level, you don’t want things to be siloed. Cuz if you’re running. Display ads over here, and then you’re doing something with loyalty and then you’ve got something in store and you’ve got email or whatever.
[00:20:42] how do you know what’s actually working with all those things? Right? And so the idea and the vision and what we’re building towards is something that’s actually connected so that they can play nice with each other and you can do a lot more, a lot better attribution than currently exists in the space today.
[00:20:58] Um, and you know, [00:21:00] it’s. On the grocery side of things, it’s like, it’s the reason that these retail media networks are popping up. It’s the reason that they’re kind of taking control of this process overall, cuz ultimately the core of all of that and what runs all of that is the first party data. So, .
[00:21:14]Bryan Fields: I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s so critical.
[00:21:16] Right? And a lot of people like to refer to as like my cell phone as listening. Yeah. But in actuality, you’ve seen a bunch of ads various times and you just kind of suppress them into the background and then eventually it’s connected enough. So is there any sort of data points that says, your team says, we need to see nine impressions in order to, to convert.
[00:21:32] Is there any sort of numbers behind that that your team has found leads to, uh, a convers.
[00:21:37]Ian Rumpp: So not, not in, not too specifically when it comes to that because part of it also is, is tough to track in terms of impressions. Like you can relate the people that are coming into the stores, to what the content was at the time, what was playing, you know, what they ended up buying.
[00:21:52] You can do things like that. Where, where the tech hasn’t evolved as much yet is more of what you’d see in in an [00:22:00] e-com environment where you have like a direct attribution. , this person was watching this particular video on Facebook. They clicked through, they ordered it, right? Like that’s a direct attribution.
[00:22:11] Hell of a lot easier to do because you can just track it from the start. Uh, whereas in store you have a little bit less of that that is capable right now. But what we do is we combine it with things like geofencing campaigns where you can. Have an anonymized like device ID targeting type approach where, you know, they showed up in the store, you know, they bought X and you can relate that in most cases to the loyalty.
[00:22:35] Um, as long as you have good relationships and good partnerships there. Um, but right now it’s, it’s pretty siloed. So it’s tough to find someone that has all those pieces that you can actually.
[00:22:51]Bryan Fields: can you give an exact example of that? I, I want our listeners to make sure they understand when we talk about the geofence, like can you just walk through someone like Kellen went to the dispensary, he bought an edible. Can you [00:23:00] explain how that would work?
[00:23:01]Ian Rumpp: Yeah, so, so in this, this, and again, this is kind of like the perfect world scenario, right?
[00:23:06] So like it’s not something that’s widespread today, but. , what you could do is you could target an audience of Kellen’s, right? Like people that are, like Kellen, that have similar purchase history, stuff like that, target them with a geofence campaign. So that way when he shows up and he’s in the store and he’s got his phone on him, right?
[00:23:26] It registers as Okay, Kellen was here. Okay. And it’s a lot of this is anonymized too, so I, I don’t want to get like too far down the rabbit hole, but just for like the purposes of explaining it right. So is here. Kellen’s a loyalty member. He is signed up. This is typically what he likes to buy. You know, here are the initiatives the dispensary has in terms of what they’re trying to push, whether it’s promo based or not.
[00:23:49] And you can connect those things to be based on timeframes and based on the channels you’re using. So if you only are showing or talking about a product in store, nowhere else, you run [00:24:00] the geofencing, well, excuse me, not nowhere else. You’d run it with the geofencing. So you’d see a display ad for a. Show up in the store, see it in the store, buy the product.
[00:24:09] Now we have a more direct attribution line right there that you can say. Kellen showed up, he saw this ad, he came to the store, he bought that product. It’s a, a
[00:24:19]Bryan Fields: beautiful world that one day, uh, we will be and will likely freak out. A lot of people they’re hearing this for the first time being like, I hope that’s not
[00:24:26]Ian Rumpp: how things work.
[00:24:26] Oh, absolutely. I mean, it’s kind of like the, the, the one I like to use to really represent it is, is in New York actually. Did you ever go to that Nike Design? Nike ID Innovation store. Okay. So what it is, is that you, when you’re a Nike Plus member, you have it on your phone. Okay. When you went into that, , it would recognize that you were there.
[00:24:49] It would look at your profile. So if you’re a golfer, basketball player, whatever, and it would change the digital screen content to that sport or whatever it is that you like [00:25:00] to content related to that. And then you could do things like you could play, you could say, I want to try on it would know all your sizes cuz it’s in your profile, right?
[00:25:08] So you’d be like, oh I want to try on those shoes that I just saw, they’d bring it out to you. You try ’em on like, it’s this whole unique, personalized experience. Right? And ultimately that’s what you could do down the road. But it obviously takes, takes a lot and cannabis is far from that. But, um, That’s the, I, I mean, that’s the good way to think about the vision down the road.
[00:25:28]Bryan Fields: Absolutely. So let’s talk about some of the packages that come. If I’m a dispenser and I want to incorporate this tech into my dispensary, is it screen based? How, how does the plan work? .
[00:25:37]Ian Rumpp: Yeah. So what you would do is, is we would work with the dispensary to understand what they currently have for digital or what we would need to add into the mix.
[00:25:45] We would, we would help, we would do store walkthroughs, things like that. We would recommend what we think would work the best. Ultimately, what they would do is they would either finance it through us or just use CapEx and buy it outright. So they own the hardware. We manage it for them. So we manage the whole [00:26:00] ecosystem, deploy content remotely.
[00:26:01] Maintenance, you name. . Um, and ultimately what we would do is if we were helping to sell the brands on packages for these displays, we would do some sort of a rev share model with them, or they can sell it as they please. And then essentially what that does is turn around and pay off the investment of the hardware, and then everything they get ongoing after that is just incremental dollars.
[00:26:22] So that’s the real high level of, of how easy it can be. How many
[00:26:26]Bryan Fields: screens does one, let’s say on average,
[00:26:30]Ian Rumpp: Um, per store. I would say it’s probably about six. And that could be, that doesn’t have to all be like digital signage type screens. That could be three screens. One of ’em is for a menu, two of ’em are for promo content.
[00:26:43] And then you’ve got a few unique displays that are brand specific that they sell the backup point of sales screens. . I think the most common package would be a freestanding like display in the lobby that has an opportunity to sell a brand on putting packaging there and talking about [00:27:00] their brand. Then you’d have like three screens in the store menu, that kind of thing.
[00:27:05] And then you’d have a backup point of sale and you would have one like digital merchandising. So you, you’d end up with about six or seven, you know, in.
[00:27:14]Kellan Finney: Do you guys provide like a catalog or like help them walk through like the screen sizes and what would fit best
[00:27:19]Ian Rumpp: and that kind of stuff? Yep, exactly. So we have a whole, a whole mixture of stuff available.
[00:27:25] Tons and tons of things. So what we do really is we do a little bit of pre-homework before we even start that conversation. Cuz otherwise it can be just straight up overwhelming. So, We take a look and we understand what we think would work best, and that’s what we initially start with. And then if it needs custom sizing or anything like that, we have great manufacturing partners so that we can do custom sizing in those scenarios.
[00:27:46] But we do, at this point, we have probably at least 10 like digital merchandising display options that I call off the shelf, meaning they’re pretty standardized in terms of size, et cetera, and [00:28:00] all we have to do is brand them how they want to be brand. . Um, and then everything else with the ease of digital, you switch it out however you want it, you know?
[00:28:09] What about creating the content? We do that too. Um, we also, the way I’ve positioned us really is cuz a lot of people have marketing folks. They either have an agency or they have someone on staff. So the intention there is, Hey, we can do this for you, or we don’t have to. We’ll just give you the best practices, tell you how long it needs to be.
[00:28:27] You do the work, do whatever you wanna do, supply us the files, we’ll get it upload. . One of
[00:28:32]Bryan Fields: the things that I was thinking about during that is some of the conversations that maybe occur, maybe don’t, but for example, if someone is in the lobby, they might want to be shoving the, the, the price discounts in front of people as a way of trying to attract sales, which as we’ve discussed, might not be best.
[00:28:45] So having those conversations must be extremely difficult because again, it’s not getting that return. They’re looking for if the consumer’s seeing price is the moment they.
[00:28:53]Ian Rumpp: Yeah. So, and some of it actually is the, ironically about that, like in some states we can’t even do that within the [00:29:00] lobbies. Like you have to completely avoid like product images or pricing or anything like that.
[00:29:05] So it’s a state by state scenario. Uh, sometimes I have the blessing of they can’t even do it there, so I’m like, great, don’t even have to worry about it. Um, but ultimately I think when you step back and think about the customer journey and where people like where the headspace is as they’re going. It’s easier to understand and explain and quite honestly defend the strategy that way.
[00:29:27] Uh, just because like, you know, if someone’s going to a store, they might have something in mind that they either always go to buy or just in general, like, okay, I’m going to get flour, we’ll see what they have today, type thing. Right? So it’s easy to, to kind of help them understand the purpose of each of the digital placements.
[00:29:45] And sometimes it’s just easy to say, well, don’t you want to talk about your loyalty program and get signups? . There you go. Right. Oh, the, the beauty of
[00:29:54]Bryan Fields: cannabis. Yeah. . So much fun. That’s different everywhere, you know? Yep. Has, has [00:30:00] tele faced additional challenges because it operates in other industries as well, because it’s taken on the cannabis industry?
[00:30:05]Ian Rumpp: Uh, I wouldn’t say it’s, it’s provided any challenges. Right. Like there, the only thing would, there would even come close to that would be the fact that we started, you know, with more of a grocery focus. You know, because we didn’t start with our very first pilot in cannabis. Like, you know, are we a cannabis associated company?
[00:30:23] Are we grocery associated company? And the reality of it is that they’re a lot more similar than you’d think. Um, when it comes to the strategy behind it. . Um, and ultimately cannabis is a hell of a lot better for margins. So it’s actually a lot easier to sell these packages the way that we do . What about
[00:30:41]Kellan Finney: from vendors though?
[00:30:42] I mean, was there any pushback vendors understanding that some of their products are actually gonna be sold to plant
[00:30:47]Ian Rumpp: touching businesses? Uh, not actually a great question and No. So far, so I’m gonna go ahead. Knock. Yeah. , definitely, that hasn’t crossed my mind yet because no one has, [00:31:00] uh, Actually, the only thing that would even be close to that would be there was a podcast that someone wanted me to be on.
[00:31:08] Once they found out we were servicing the cannabis industry, they did not want me on anymore, . Oh,
[00:31:16]Bryan Fields: wow. What’s a feature request that you get? A lot. That you’ll never build?
[00:31:21]Ian Rumpp: Never build. Um, . That’s a great question because quite honestly, I am open to almost any of these things. Um, so I can’t say there’s one that I would never build.
[00:31:37] I would say that the things that we steer away from in our service is more of like the full payment checkout experience related to what we do, because the, we can build it into what we. , but that scenario is much more like, Hey, I’m just showing up. I’ve already [00:32:00] placed my order and I’m just here to pick it up, type deal.
[00:32:03] Right? So in that scenario, we would basically just add one of our point of sale screens or content to it. Um, so I honestly can’t say that there’s a feature request that we would never build. Um, it’s more so about deciding which ones we’re gonna do first, right? So let’s talk about that.
[00:32:19]Bryan Fields: What’s the
[00:32:19]Ian Rumpp: future roadmap?
[00:32:21] Uh, so future roadmap is, uh, more advanced capabilities around that dynamic content trigger that I talked about. Um, it’s also creating more of a, a fully digital experience within the store so that instead of just focusing on a couple different placements, you can basically digitize the whole thing. Um, so there’s a few different models we’re looking at.
[00:32:41] One of ’em is more of that automated experience where you can go in. It’s not bud tender lists, but it’s more along those lines where you can learn everything you need to learn and check out if you need to, versus an experience where you are placing digital strategically to get [00:33:00] customers attention to it, to spark a conversation with a bud tender.
[00:33:03] And our role there is is much more around awareness. So those are, those are the two, like high level, uh, roadmaps, if you will. But yeah, on the tech side it’s, it’s much more about making everything work seamlessly together. We’re gonna continue to build out integrations with partners, um, you know, and make sure that anything that is right now, maybe auto manual is truly auto.
[00:33:26] Um, so that’s APIs, that’s, I mean, you name it, all that sort of. ,
[00:33:32]Bryan Fields: what is one factor statistic that you’ve learned operating the cannabis industry that would surprise or shock others?
[00:33:38]Ian Rumpp: Oh, surprise or shock others? Not everyone has an idea of inventory levels in stores.
[00:33:51]Bryan Fields: They, they don’t know at all, or they’re just guessing with those numbers?
[00:33:55]Ian Rumpp: Yeah, a little bit of both. Um, you know, and I think it, I’m a little like [00:34:00] desensitized to it because we’ve come across it quite a bit and some of it is just honestly, That the dispensaries and the brands don’t necessarily communicate well. So they, the brands don’t necessarily know exactly how many SKUs are in each location.
[00:34:11] They know what they sent there, and they know generally how long it takes to sell those, but they don’t have like a, a real-time view into what they have in each store, which is one of the things that we do offer to brands, uh, as part of our package. So I think that it’s not that surprising within the industry, but outside the industry, I think people would be like, what
[00:34:32]Bryan Fields: Can imagine, uh, a customer’s not so happy if they’ve been 20 minutes, they’ve been promoted to WA product and they get to the front and they’re like, we don’t even sell Warner products here. Uh, we, we haven’t had those in two
[00:34:43]Ian Rumpp: weeks. Yep, yep, yep. So we, we stay real tied in on that. Like, on the dispensary front, we, we consider ourselves an extension of their team, right?
[00:34:51] Like the idea is to make it easy. We’re not trying to create extra work for anybody. What we’re trying to do is help optimize and streamline so that those pro those problems, [00:35:00] potential problems, can be avoided. ,
[00:35:03]Bryan Fields: what is the most misunderstood
[00:35:05]Ian Rumpp: thing about tele? Uh, that we’re just a marketing agency. Yeah.
[00:35:11] Like, there’s so much more to it. A lot of what we do really is the integration between marketing and merchandising. So, you know, you can do a lot of great marketing. You can have a bunch of different purposes. It can be brand focused, it can be promotion focused, whatever you wanna do. , but the idea there is more related to the products themselves, the brands in the store, what moves well, what doesn’t move well, what do your customers truly like, right.
[00:35:35] Versus what you think they like. Right. And how do you have data to back that up? So ultimately the, the, the marriage between, you know, digital hardware, great content and a way to measure it is what tele is. And I think we too often just get branded as a marketing agency, and that’s really not what we. , Ian, if you had unlimited
[00:35:55]Bryan Fields: capital, what initiatives would you take on that you are not currently able to?[00:36:00]
[00:36:01]Ian Rumpp: I would create a, and I’m pretty close to it already, but if I had unlimited capital, what I would do. Is I would create an entire catalog of each of the components I just talked about where you could have any size digital display for that would fit anything. You’d have integrations with every single point of sale system that are automatic.
[00:36:22] You would have integrations with any loyalty programs that people are using. and you would also have integrations with any of the digital marketing agencies out there so that as that grows, you essentially have one hub, one tele hub that has all those different data points that feed into it. So you have one master view of everything you’re doing across the board.
[00:36:41] And honestly, that’s what we’ve got. We have it right now. It’s just a little bit more stitched together, so to speak, than completely auto automated. I like it. Yeah, that’s. ,
[00:36:54]Bryan Fields: before we do predictions, we ask all of our guests, if you could sum up your experience in a main takeaway or lesson, learn to pass onto the [00:37:00] next generation, what would it be?
[00:37:03]Ian Rumpp: Ask questions and listen, because the, a lot of what you know, you think could work well, could potentially work well in theory, but you need to listen to the operators and understand what the day-to-day processes look like, what the store experiences are. in order to make sure that those things work. So my advice there is you gotta understand what’s really going on within those spaces if you want to design something right?
[00:37:29] It’s kind. It’s the scenario of like designing a car or whatever it is that you think is awesome, but then 99% of the country or world hates it,
[00:37:41]Bryan Fields: All right. Prediction time. Ian. If cannabis companies had to focus on only one metric as their north, What should that metric
[00:37:50]Ian Rumpp: be? Ooh, one metric. Um, good luck, Helen. Gosh. Well, one [00:38:00] metric, I think what cannabis fun companies need to focus on would be margin. , because I know that’s very general, but I’m saying that because that really is gonna tell them how their product moves and where they live within the ecosystem, right?
[00:38:16] So ultimately what we’ll end up having is we’ll have more value brands, so to speak, that are on the cheaper end of things. And then you’ll have your high end, you know, top level luxury brands, if you will. And the more that you can understand about the margin around your products, the better you can. I like it ke.
[00:38:37] I like it.
[00:38:37]Kellan Finney: I got, uh, what is it? Uh, I think we talked about it earlier. Uh, total sales.
[00:38:42]Bryan Fields: Yes.
[00:38:46]Ian Rumpp: I know you saw there. I like, I was about to spit it out and just say total sales.
[00:38:56]Kellan Finney: Uh, I think volume’s important too. Um. [00:39:00] I think that especially as like markets get compressed and all these other things, like margins can be tough, but volume at least tells you that at least you have an
[00:39:07]Bryan Fields: audience out there
[00:39:08]Ian Rumpp: still. Yeah, and I, I think that’s very, very true, right? Like the, the combination of looking at margin and volume is kind of the sweet spot.
[00:39:15] And I think where it gets diluted in today’s world is that, volume can be pretty misleading when you’re doing buy one, get one or buy two, get one on every single product you have all the time. Oh, that’s a good point. I didn’t
[00:39:27]Kellan Finney: even think of that. And everything’s always on sale these
[00:39:29]Ian Rumpp: days, and that’s, that’s, that’s why I’m like, yeah, that, you know, cause, because yeah, that, that’ll tell you you’re moving a lot of units.
[00:39:36] Right. But, but you’re giving, you’re cutting in a, a huge portion. Central margin, huge margin. Right. Smart. That’s why you, you’re at tele for sure. ? Yeah.
[00:39:46]Bryan Fields: What do you think Brian? So I’m gonna cheat and I’m gonna take two, uh, the two I’m gonna take are the repeat purchasing, cuz I think it’s very critical for brands to know if the brand’s picking up traction.
[00:39:57] If someone comes back and buys a second time. , but also customer [00:40:00] acquisition costs because I, I think that’s a number that kind of gets lost in the shop here, but it’s really critical to understand like what it costs for brands to acquire a customer, because then I think it helps them understand what money they can spend from a marketing standpoint to bring people in.
[00:40:12] Because as we start solidifying numbers, legitimately, as this industry scales, you need to really hone in on certain margins. But you also need to know what it costs to acquire a customer, to know what resources you need to deploy to keep growing your business. Unless you’re, you’re going the. .
[00:40:27]Ian Rumpp: Yeah. No, I think, I think that’s dead on.
[00:40:29] I mean, even with the news out of Twitter today, right? Like you can, cannabis companies can advertise now, right? So now you have a little bit more metrics there that you can look at. He’s desperate for
[00:40:40]Bryan Fields: money. I, I think it’s a money play. He
[00:40:41]Ian Rumpp: needs the cash. Yeah. I mean, of smart of course, of course. Like, but the, the good thing about it, regardless of it all right, is the way that this works.
[00:40:50] no one really wants to be the first. So once somebody is the first, they figure out the bugs, they figure out the things that work or don’t work or whatever. I guarantee you, I was [00:41:00] just going back and forth on LinkedIn with someone today, um, about whether or not like Facebook or Meta or whatever the hell you want to Facebook, Instagram, et cetera.
[00:41:09] When will they do it? And I guarantee. , they’ve already done the work and they could flip it on right now if they wanted to. And all they’re doing, and it’s the same for all of ’em. All they’re doing is they’re waiting to see and make sure that the optics are, are good enough right now that Twitter’s out there, that if it’s received well enough, they’ll turn it on too.
[00:41:30] If there’s ad revenue involved, they’ll all do it eventually. Oh yeah. Yeah. Facebook. That’s how
[00:41:36]Kellan Finney: they all run Google.
[00:41:37]Bryan Fields: Google also at this point, right? Yeah, totally. So Ian, far listeners, they wanna get in touch, they wanna learn more about tele, where can they find you?
[00:41:44]Ian Rumpp: Uh, so you can go to the website, tele digital.com, um, slash cannabis if you wanna jump straight to the cannabis offering, cuz we do have some other stuff on there.
[00:41:52] Um, we’re in the process of redesigning our site too, so it’ll be, right now, I, it’s, it’s, uh, the first one we built [00:42:00] four and a half years ago now. So it’s. It’s not my favorite thing, but uh, you can find me also on LinkedIn. Um, I’m on Twitter as well, pretty active. If you like the Portland Trailblazers, you’ll love me on Twitter, uh, as Brian knows.
[00:42:16] But, um, either way, yeah, LinkedIn, twitter, tele digital.com. That’s where you can find me. Awesome. We’ll link it all.
[00:42:22]Bryan Fields: Bitch shot on. Thanks for taking the time. This was fun. Thank you guys.
